SURVEY OF MICROBIAL ENVIRONMENT FOR CREW HEALTH AT THE MARS DESERT - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

SURVEY OF MICROBIAL ENVIRONMENT FOR CREW HEALTH AT THE MARS DESERT RESEARCH STATION

Samuel Albert, D. Marshall Porterfield Purdue University 4/14/2018

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OUTLINE

• What is the Mars Desert Research Station?
• Reflections on the 2-week mission
• State of microbial monitoring for space habitats
• Experiment overview:
• Motivation
• Procedure
• Results
• Discussion
• Future work
• Questions

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Image: NASA astronaut and Flight Engineer Ricky Arnold works with the student- designed Genes in Space-5 experiment inside the Harmony module.

From @iss on Instagram, image credit to NASA

MARS DESERT RESEARCH STATION

• Mars analogue station in Utah, established by

the Mars Society in 2001

• Mission: simulate living on Mars to support

human mission to the Martian surface

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MEET CREW 186 – BOILERS2MARS

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• 7 member crew of Purdue students

and alumni

• First all-Purdue MDRS crew
• 2 week rotation Dec. 30th 2017 –
• Jan. 14th 2018

GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON MDRS

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MICROBIAL MONITORING ON ISS

• Current process requires sample analysis on

Earth

• Additional limitations on culture-based methods
• Requirement for next-gen microbial monitoring:

non-culture-based monitoring hardware

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Image: excerpt from culture-based procedure Microbial Air Sampler Kit for use

• n ISS. From [1]

GENES IN SPACE-3

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• First identification of unknown microbes fully in

space

• Used sample-to-sequence method developed by

microbiologists at JSC (PI: Dr. Sarah Wallace)

• Combined Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and

DNA sequencing technology

Image: NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson performed the Genes in Space-3 investigation aboard the space station using the miniPCR and MinION to identify unknown microbes

• n station.

Credits: NASA

MOTIVATION

• Modified version of Genes in Space-3 procedure

used at MDRS

• Motivation:
• Survey microbial environment at MDRS
• Provide data directly comparable with ISS results
• Further examine “usability” of procedure and methods

for an untrained user

• Collaboration with Dr. Sarah Wallace and Sarah

Stahl at JSC enabled use of the same procedure and hardware as on the ISS (miniPCR and MinION)

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PROCEDURE

• Swab surface of interest
• Isolate and amplify DNA using miniPCR
• Sequence DNA using MinION
• Base-call and analyze results post-mission

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Image: me in the Science Dome at MDRS using a micropipette to transfer samples

TEST LOCATIONS

• 4 runs total
• 3 runs in normal living space

(living room door knob, fridge handle, bathroom sink, etc.)

• 1 run in GreenHab, using

GreenHab Officer Mark Gee’s experiment setup

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Image: working with Mark to sample from each trial in the GreenHab

RESULTS SUMMARY

• Living areas:
• Few quality reads of DNA
• Low biomass
• Bacteria part of normal human environment, such as

staphylococcus and streptococcus (also found on ISS!)

• Greenhab:
• Many quality reads of DNA
• High biomass
• Some pathogenic bacteria, in family

Enterobacteriaceae

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CONCLUSIONS

• Low bacterial growth in living areas, not harmful

bacteria

• High bacterial growth in GreenHab experiment,

harmful to humans

• Procedure was effective and not overly time-

consuming

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Image: Mark giving a tour of the GreenHab. These plants were isolate from the experiment.

FUTURE WORK

• Further validation of these results
• Further testing at MDRS
• More testing on ISS and other analogue stations
• Long-term goal: broad comparison study of

isolated space (or space-analogue) habitats

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Image: loading the miniPCR in the Science Dome

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

• Dr. Sarah Wallace and Sarah Stahl of NASA Johnson

Space Center

• The rest of MDRS Crew 186 – Boilers 2 Mars
• Purdue chapter of the Mars Society for organizing the

formation of Crew 186

• Purdue Honors College, Purdue Engineering Student

Council, the Purdue chapter of Women in Engineering, Purdue Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Purdue Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Purdue Global Engineering Program, and Mars Academy USA.

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REFERENCES

[1] Pierson, D. L., Ott, C. M., Botkin, D. J., Bruce, R. J., Castro, V. A., Smith, M. J., and Oubre, C. M., “Microbial Monitoring of the International Space Station,” Environmental Monitoring: A Comprehensive Handbook, J. Moldenhauer, ed., Bethesda, MD: Davis Healthcare International Publishing, LLC, 2012, pp. 1–27.

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QUESTIONS?

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